His article, Ask Me About Your Volt, mixed praise for the car ("plenty slick, in its way," an "impressive piece of technology and a lot of fun to drive") with a long description of being unable to use a public charging station without the right membership card.

His article closes with a reminder that the American taxpayer bailed out and still owns part of General Motors. He calls the Volt,

...a talking point, a floundering mascot of a political worldview according to which markets can be bribed and cajoled into making premature and uneconomic decisions, innovation can be centrally planned, and the future runs on the good intentions of the present’s policymaking class.

Compared to the factually wrong segments and articles of the past year, that counts as progress.

Stronger sales, safety established

In late April, we asked Rob Peterson, GM's longtime Volt spokesperson, whether the critiques seemed to have ended.

He credited the change to "highly enthusiastic and vocal owners, electric-car proponents, and hawks like Bob Lutz" for keeping critics honest.

But, Peterson said, "the Volt remains a magnet for controversy, [so] continuing to get solid results will be key to avoiding another tempest in a teapot."

Ad dollars at risk?

Media sources suggest that perhaps business trumped ideology: Did GM have a quiet chat with the sales folks at right-wing media outlets--in which it spends many millions of ad dollars--to suggest that its spending might not be guaranteed?

If that's the case, we'll likely never know quite what happened--or how.

On the other hand, perhaps the subject just grew stale, with viewer and reader outrage shifting to new and fresher targets.

Right-wing readers 'don't care'

A colleague at one such outlet remarked sadly that electric-car stories had apparently hit a brick wall with readers: "They don't even hate them enough to care."

Regardless of the reason, we're very glad that perhaps now electric cars can be debated on their merits, and criticized based on actual study data rather than unfounded assertions and biases.

What do you think? Is this just a hiatus, or have electric cars moved out of the targets of their most vehement and fact-free critics?